Hakuna! Ongee! Tawe! Gũtirĩ!

The human being is a heckler. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a polished and refined bureaucrat or a rusty hawker in some dark and desolate alley along River Road. The accountant, when home from work and in front of his 40-inch TV, will still heckle and chuckle when he hears a disagreeable comment from a politician. The prize goes to the hawker though, who will attend a meeting and courageously make his feelings known.

The question as to whether heckling is right or wrong falls within the realms of nature. And nature, you’d agree, is complex. Questions of nature have no simple or simplistic answers. Nature scorns soundbites and clichés. And nature is not just about majestic forests, clothed in death-like stillness—or the power and poise of lions as their roar echoes and re-echoes across the rugged expanse of the Mara.

Finally, nature is not just about atoms and electrons.

When correctly comprehended, nature encompasses the metaphysical. It deals with ideas and ideals as well as values and virtues. In antiquity and during the classical periods, natural philosophy was a big scholarly tent under which men studied astronomy and beauty, physics and ethics—all side by side.

This is to show that to study heckling—is to study ethics—and to study nature.

In less than six months, Kenyans are going to the polls for an election that will usher in a transition. Politicians have many tools and avenues to pass their message across to the populace: a few refined town hall-like meetings, a dash of carefully worded social media messaging through platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and live TV interviews, where politicians and their apparatchiks smash phones and bang tables to emphasize their arguments.

Yet the truth is that a political rally remains the theatre of action and the real marketplace of political discourse. In a typical political rally, tradition gives the politician the power and prestige to talk down to the public. They clap and chant and then go home. The (un)settled opinion is that if a citizen does not agree with a politician or with his message, he should just stay away. Heckling, they are told, is immoral, uncouth, even criminal.

Fair enough.

However, where is the citizens’ voice and platform to register their disapproval and displeasure? Is heckling inherently and invariably wrong? Are there situations when heckling should be tolerated, even encouraged? What is the place of heckling in a free and democratic society? How does the law on heckling intersect and overlap with issues to do with free speech?

To understand anything, it’s important to travel back in time to its roots and origins. Before the 18th century, the word “heckling” as we now understand it meant an entirely different thing. A heckler was then a person using a tool called a heckle to comb and refine flax, or in some cases, hemp. Heckling involved drawing out the unwanted fibres from the flax so that it would be clean enough to be spun. A heckler therefore was an industrious worker, who, I should imagine, was dignified and respected.

It was not a coincidence that the Scottish town of Dundee, which was home to many heckler-workers, would emerge as the place where heckling was refined and transformed to become the proto-type of the heckling that we now relate to. Heckler-workers would choose one from amongst themselves to read the day’s news to the whole group. In response to politicians’ reported speeches that they deemed absurd or ridiculous, the rest of the heckler-workers would taunt and tease, scorn and sneer.

A heckler was then a person using a tool called a heckle to comb and refine flax, or in some cases, hemp.

In Scotland, even when the meaning changed with the times, it did not at first involve derisive catcalls, loud jeers, or disruptive boos. Instead, heckling referred to the intense questioning of politicians by the public. The Scottish story tells us that heckling is a legitimate tool that has the potential to improve the democratic tone and texture of a republic. In many other countries, heckling has been a successful device both as a political thermostat (to influence public opinion or government policy) and political thermometer (to reflect public opinion or government policy). Public speeches about the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons, clean fuel, apartheid, and civil rights have, for the same intent, involved some heckling-punctuated protests. This history is important. It shows us that heckling was a socio-political device invented by struggling industrial workers—the class we would call hustlers in Kenya’s current political jargon. Even more curious and exciting is the fact that, as a political device and innovation, it evolved in Scotland, the birthplace of John Stuart Mill, the foremost patriarch and prophet of civil liberty including free speech.

Many political leaders have since been heckled, even those upon whose graves history has put gorgeous wreaths of beautiful flowers. Nelson Mandela was heckled by Muslim adherents in 2001, when he paid a visit to the Grey Street Mosque in Durban, Kwazulu-Natal, because of his stand on the war on terror and the American military campaign in Afghanistan.

In Kenya, the most enduring story of heckling was President Jomo Kenyatta’s visit to Kisumu in 1969 where he was met with shouts of “Ndume, Ndume”—the approving chants directed to elevate his then foremost political nemesis Jaramogi. When Kenyatta rose to speak, his unprintable expletives provoked the crowd. Chaos ensued. Police started firing randomly. Official government records put the death toll at 11.

Without being insensitive to the victims of this incident, this figure, in the weighing scale of fatalities—does not answer to the subsequent description of a massacre. Prof. Macharia Munene, in his book Historical Reflections on Kenya, alleges that the term Kisumu massacre evolved due to the push by historians such as William Ochieng and Bethwell Ogot. But that’s a story for another day.

Many political leaders have since been heckled, even those upon whose graves history has put gorgeous wreaths of beautiful flowers.

As we can see, the cost of heckling was paid in blood and tears. Most recently, thanks to the expanding democratic space, heckling is increasingly tolerated. While on the campaign trail recently, Raila was heckled some places in Meru. William Ruto has also been heckled in parts of the former Western Province.

There are convincing arguments against heckling. One very seductive argument is that heckling limits free speech.

The gold standard for free speech—in Western thought and civilization—is Mill’s Liberty. In this Tour de Force, the student of politics will find perhaps the most elegant arguments in favour of free speech ever penned. Listen to this:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

In issues to do with free speech, Mill argues, numbers mean nothing. The opinion and voice of a solitary man is equal to the voice and opinion of an impressive assembly.

When you silence a person, the cost to knowledge and social progress can be huge. And the person who “loses” is not just the person silenced. The loss is for the whole society, as Mill eloquently posits:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. [Emphasis mine.]

Yet in the chaotic sphere of heckling, there’s a tension and struggle between the free speech of the speaker and the free speech of the heckler. If you give one the benefit of an uninterrupted speech, you shut down and deny the other. It almost looks like a zero-sum game. You might argue that the meeting has been convened by the politician and therefore is technically the politician’s meeting, and that he should hold the exclusive keys of free speech.

This was William Ruto’s argument when he lost his cool in the face of sustained heckling during a Laikipia tour.

Granted, we are wont to view the heckler as the aggressor who wants to take a place belonging to someone else. That, moreover, the people who attend a rally or some other public meeting come purposefully to listen to the speaker and not the heckler.

Well, not quite.

In the Heckler’s Promise, Lee Campbell, argues in his paper that the heckler wants neither to be the official speaker nor silent mute. And that without the heckler, public speaking is not democratic as should answer to the meaning of participative democracy. Campbell also argues that if we muzzle the heckler, there’s no genuine encounter between the politician and the citizen.

Moreover, I tend to view heckling as social release—some form of catharsis—that is absolutely necessary in a living and breathing democracy. For how do you muzzle a citizen and subdue him with fake batons of decency and decorum—when he comes to listen to a member of parliament who has squandered the constituency’s allocations on girlfriends—by telling him to listen passively or to request for an impossible chance to speak? Or how can anyone really fault the crowd for heckling President Moi at the burial of Robert Ouko?

Yet in the chaotic sphere of heckling, there’s a tension and struggle between the free speech of the speaker and the free speech of the heckler.

You can say that he can register his disapproval through the ballot. And therein lies the problem. The politician has a vote, a voice, and a platform. Yet the voter only has the vote. And we’re not talking about legislation—which the citizen delegates to his legislator—according to the canons of representative democracy. Here, we’re talking about public discourse and/or expression.

You can also argue that the citizen can convene his own meeting. However, who knows him? If he calls a meeting, who will attend?

If we fully grasp the power dynamics between Prince and Pauper, to borrow the title of Mark Twain’s popular novel, then perhaps the heckler should be congratulated—not criticized.

Yet, the truth is that the prince and the pauper are not equal and never will be. Adam Smith, the celebrated classical economist and moral philosopher, even argues that social inequality is good for society. Without it, there cannot be any meaningful progress. Egalitarianism is utopia.

So, we should perhaps admit that a citizen will not have the voice and the platform like the politician. Yet even if the platform is the politician’s, it is wholly against nature to be passive like a pebble; even a stone causes ripples when it is thrown into water.

There can be a compromise: We don’t have absolute rights—even when it comes to the right of free speech or expression. So long as the speaker’s right to speak is not drowned out and completely halted, you have not interfered with his right to free speech. If you heckle him spontaneously or at intervals that do not make speech impossible, you may have just achieved the democratic ideal that the majority should decide—and the minority be heard. This is as it applies to the voice, separate to the vote.

So the point is: you should not heckle with the intention of disrupting—but only to register your displeasure. Otherwise, you’re limiting the speaker’s rights and the rights of others—who came to listen to what the speaker had to say. As celebrated jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes would memorably aver, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

Surprisingly, Kenyans have been practicing this kind of non-disruptive heckling as can be seen from video clips of Ruto’s and Raila’s meetings.

But some might still argue that it’s right to disrupt a meeting. Of course that’s correct—even if it’s illegal! This is because something can be legal but patently unjust and unconscionable. That is the field and sphere of civil disobedience in the tradition of such figures as Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. Here’s what Martin Luther King Jr. said:

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

In any case, ideas are like commodities. For instance, if you found someone selling heroin to children, and if you had the strength, would you leave him right there, and go to report the matter to the police? You’d first disrupt the sale. It’s the right thing to do.

By that analogy, if someone is selling poisonous and dangerous ideas, you’d be duty bound to disrupt him or her by any means including heckling. The fundamental element of civil disobedience is that disruption must be civil.

Of course, violence and stone-throwing are acts beyond the pale and which the law and society should condemn.

While heckling is to a large extent acceptable, it can be used by political opponents to disadvantage rivals in the political marketplace. That’s the reason organized heckling is suspicious. However, organized hecklings are not created equal. For instance, I don’t believe that voters should not organize to heckle a politician.

“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

Politicians meet all the time to plan what they’ll tell us. This is organization. There’s nothing wrong if the people organize on how they’ll register their displeasure—provided they do this by themselves. The organized heckling that can’t pass muster is the one where a politician uses money to plan and heckle a rival’s meeting. This is corruption of political discourse which makes the political marketplace artificially un-even.

This treatise would not be complete without mentioning one other important function of heckling in a free and democratic society. Heckling tests the emotional intelligence and wit of a politician. It’s a bad sign for a democracy if a politician is easily rattled by hecklers.

The famous British parliamentarian John Wilkes was on the campaign trail when he met a heckler. This is how it went.

Heckler: Vote for you? I’d sooner vote for the devil.

John Wilkes: What if your friend is not vying?

Everyone, I can imagine, burst into uproarious laughter, while approving Wilkes witty response.

This is one area Deputy President William Ruto should probably work on.

Heckling can be fun, especially if it’s spontaneous. It can actually qualify as an artful form of expressing dissent.

So go and heckle—but don’t disrupt.

“Welcome to tomorrow!” and “Tomorrow is already here!” are popular phrases often used in the context of the so-called Fourth Industrial revolution (“4IR”). Thus at the Sight Tech global Conference held on 2nd and 3rd December 2020, one of the plenary sessions was titled “Our AI future is already here”. In Profit and Prejudice: The Luddites of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Paul Donovan summarises the past three industrial revolutions as (1) steam power, (2) electric power, and (3) computer power. Nicholas Johnson and Brendan Markey-Towler speak of the four revolutions as the industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the digital revolution, and the fourth industrial revolution. They go on to note that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the current period of economic transition since the mid-2000s, characterized by a fusion of new digital technologies, rooted in advances from the Digital Revolution, with technological applications in the physical and biological domains. Similarly, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, formerly the European Management Forum, observes that the fourth industrial revolution is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.

Nancy W. GLEASON cites MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee as referring to 4IR as the Second Machine Age (“2MA”). According to them, while the first machine age was about the automation of manual labour and physical strength, the 2MA technological progress in digital hardware, software and networks is about the automation of knowledge. At the core of the automation of knowledge is artificial intelligence (AI). Johnson and Markey-Towler explain: “Artificial intelligence, especially when endowed with machine learning algorithms, is a technology which seeks to mimic the functioning of the human mind, and which can therefore mimic human action guided by a process that mimics human thought.” Johnson and Markey-Towler further observe that artificial intelligence has greatly enhanced the use of robots:

…, the 4IR moves the goalposts from automation to smartization, whereby intelligently programmed software and robots are able to collect new data during the regular course of their operation, share it with other approved devices on the network, analyse the data, and use the conclusions to update their course of action. The 4IR took “dumb” autonomous machines and made them “smart.” This step was essential to the development of technological marvels such as self-driving cars and trucks and next-generation industrial robotics.

During the December 2020 Sight Tech Global Conference which I referred to at the beginning of this article, Kai-Fu Lee, one of the world’s top scientists and top investors in the field of artificial intelligence and author of AI Superpowers: China Silicon Valley and the New World Order, observed that the current generation’s breakthrough in a type of AI called neural nets, sometimes referred to as deep learning, has enabled remarkable advances in areas such as computer vision and natural language processing. He went on to state that today’s AI capabilities are so great in this raw form that what is needed now are the engineers, and, most importantly, the data to make the most of all the possibilities. He explained:

… computers … can see and hear at the same level as people now. So with speech recognition for machine translation and for object recognition, AI is now at about the same level as humans. And AI is improving rapidly, based on its ability to take a huge amount of data whether it’s spoken language or recorded videos to really train itself to do better and better. So over time, it will be a better see-er and hear-er than humans.” Referring to what he calls the third wave of artificial intelligence as perception AI, Lee spoke of “… extending and expanding this power throughout our lived environment, digitizing the world around us through the proliferation of sensors and smart devices. These devices are turning our physical world into digital data that can be analyzed and optimized by deep learning algorithms.

Nevertheless, Donovan notes that the phrase “industrial revolution” entered common usage long after the first industrial revolution had begun. He explains that Karl Marx’s collaborator on The Communist Manifesto, Frederick Engels, used the phrase in German in the 1840s, and the phrase was first used in English by Arnold Toynbee in 1882. This points to the fact that human beings often name something quite a while after they have experienced it, and the same has been true of 4IR, although we may have named it earlier than the first three because we are now more used to the idea of industrial revolutions than those who went before us were.

Klaus Schwab listed emerging 4IR technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing among the things that would drastically change our lives. Indeed, the lives of the peoples of Africa are already being touched by 4IR in ways that many of them are yet to perceive—their smart phones, with their “Location” function on, are beaming data about their movements to networks, and the data are then sold to high-tech transport companies desperate for information about traffic flow in cities; many of them unwittingly allow phone apps to access their microphones and cameras, with the real possibility of their conversations and actions being monitored; their emails and social media accounts are being monitored for information about them that is sold to marketers, advertisers and politicians who use it for “targeted messaging”; their faces are increasingly being scanned by cameras connected to face-recognition software ostensibly to enhance security, but with the real possibility of surveillance for purposes unknown to them.

Human beings often name something quite a while after they have experienced it

What is likely to be more alarming to many, however, is the fact that the combination of artificial intelligence and robotics supported by high-speed online connectivity is threatening to render jobless in a few years’ time those without requisite new skills.

In 2021, Rob Floyd informed us that the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), working with other institutional partners and nearly 40 data scientists and machine learning experts from around the globe, had completed the continent’s first “Artificial Intelligence Challenge”, ostensibly to help predict what infrastructure Africa will need in the future. According to Floyd, the exercise sought to identify machine learning tools and approaches that can inform policy decisions. The data scientists created models and designed methodologies that could help determine what infrastructure to build, where to build it, and what factors would have long-term economic impacts on the continent.

The fourth industrial revolution perpetuating western imperialism

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, imperialism is “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.” The peoples of Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand first bore the brunt of Western imperialism in the form of colonialism. In The Invention of Africa, the Congolese philosopher V.Y. Mudimbe notes that “colonialism and colonization basically mean ‘organization’, ‘arrangement’. The two words derive from the Latin word colere, meaning to cultivate or to design.” He goes on to point out that the colonists (those settling a region), as well as the colonialists (those exploiting a territory by dominating a local majority) have all tended to organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs.

Thus the politics, economics and systems of knowledge production in colonised territories were designed to imitate those of their Western colonisers. At independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, classical colonialism in Africa was replaced by neo-colonialism. Kwame Nkrumah, in the Introduction to his Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism, wrote: “THE neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage. …. The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”

In a chapter in The Disruptive Fourth Industrial Revolution: Technology, Society and Beyond, Rashied and Bhamjee observe that industrialisation in 4IR could easily continue along the path of coloniality, in which the wealthy countries of the Northern hemisphere exploit the resources of countries in the South, but that it could also result in some of the wealthier countries of the Global South exploiting their poorer counterparts. During the Third Industrial Revolution, the inequality between the wealthy countries in the North and the poor ones in the South was regularly referred to as “the digital divide” — a divide that is already finding its way into 4IR. Thus as Donovan observes, there are many people who cannot afford a smart phone and a data plan to enjoy the benefits of 4IR, so that “The democratisation of communication only applies to those above a certain income level.”

Indeed, the Digital Economy Report 2019, released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, highlighted the disproportionate concentration of the digital economy in the United States and China, with the rest of the world trailing considerably, especially countries in Africa and Latin America. According to the Report, the United States and China accounted for 90 per cent of the market capitalization value of the world’s 70 largest digital platforms, over 75 per cent of the cloud computing market, 75 per cent of all patents related to blockchain technology, and 50 per cent of global spending on the Internet of Things.

“The democratisation of communication only applies to those above a certain income level.”

The report predicted that under current regulations and policies, this trajectory was likely to continue, contributing to increasing inequality. Yet, perhaps even more disturbing, is the digital divide right inside each of our countries in Africa, where the middle class enjoys virtually all the benefits of 4IR technologies that their counterparts in the affluent West and East enjoy, while the vast majority of their compatriots still grapple with lack of basic amenities such as access to piped water and electric power so that for them the issue of entering the digital world does not even arise. This latter digital divide significantly contributes to the perpetuation of the neo-colonial structures of domination for the benefit of the West and East.

Furthermore, in the edited volume The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on Ethics, Geneviève Tanguay notes that disregard for factors such as cultural identity and political convictions is often reflected in the very design of 4IR products themselves. For example, observes Tanguay, machine learning algorithms, although designed to help in problem-solving and decision-making, are vulnerable to biases and errors arising either from their creators or from the datasets used to train the systems themselves. Tanguay goes on to write that Amazon’s time- and resource-intensive effort to build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) recruitment tool was shot through with bias against women: engineers reportedly attributed this bias to the AI combing through CVs submitted to the company over a 10-year period, most of which were submitted by men.

Donovan points out that consumers can now boycott companies that do not agree with their political positions: apps even suggest alternative products with better scores. However, he goes on to caution that, “With an app, the opinion that works out the details is someone else’s opinion. …. If the shopper has different priorities to the app designer, they may spend in areas they do not actually support.” In addition, observes Donovan, although it is often claimed that the communication technologies have democratized communication, “Algorithms give preference to some social-media users. They also will censor others. Government censorship was commonplace 300 years ago. The private-sector equivalent is the demonetisation, downgrading or banning of published content.” Such censorship from the so-called big tech has escalated in the era of COVID-19, ostensibly in a bid to fight the virus through scientifically-based information.

Disregard for factors such as cultural identity and political convictions is often reflected in the very design of 4IR products themselves.

Moreover, Western cultures are putting non-Western cultures under great pressure to allow themselves to be assimilated in the global (read “largely Western”) cultural pool on the false presumption that they are inferior to Western cultures. Thus in a chapter in African Values, Ethics, and Technology, Maleselo John Lamola points out that as the peoples of Africa use 4IR technologies designed with a Western cultural bias, they are negatively affected at a fundamental level:

The culturally disadvantaged user is … simultaneously mesmerised and alienated by an object that imposes itself as instrumental for the efficiencies of her life; during the same experience she must align her way of doing things to the intricacies of the operation of this device or machine, as well as to the social role it is cast to serve in her life.

A crucial aspect of human welfare is personal liberty, entailing rights such as those of free association, movement, expression and privacy. Yet 4IR is eroding these very liberties through surveillance: smart phones now easily “hear” and “see” much more than their users intend or know. Besides, governments are consolidating various databases (such as those on health insurance, births and deaths, voters’ lists, and criminal records) into single super-databases, so that at the click of a button those with access can view a citizen’s information in astoundingly fine details that can be used against him or her. Thus in the run-up to the 2020 US elections, some US citizens wrote a parody of the famous American civil war-period song “His Truth Goes Marching On”, part of which stated:

Our right to privacy is gone, devices are the spies.

For government surveillance those are now the ears and eyes.

They use the corporate data, no subpoenas, no surprise,

And still we don’t catch on.

All this calls to mind George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, in which the single party, embodied by the mythical “Big Brother”, deploys 4IR-type technologies to monitor not only the people’s actions, but also their thoughts. The “inner party” consists of an elite which wields power by getting the “outer party” members to do their bidding. The party has a “thought police” which deploys all manner of 4IR type technologies to keep tabs on members of the outer party, including “telescreens” in homes and in public places that “listen to” and “see” all that the citizens say and do round the clock. The thought police are even able to read the thoughts of the members of the “outer party” and unleash punishments on them for any dissenting ideas. The “proles” (short for “proletariat”) are the illiterate masses, deeply despised by both inner and outer party members, and hardly have any interaction with the political process.

Furthermore, the party constantly re-writes history to suit its immediate purposes, fabricates narratives about consistent and abundant economic growth, about a mythical enemy of the state called Goldstein, and about never-ending war with this or that foreign power. It is working on a language called “Newspeak” to totally replace “Oldspeak” (English as we now know it, with a view to reducing the number of vocabulary in the language in order to eventually make it impossible for anyone to entertain or express critical thoughts against the regime. The party’s three slogans are: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Indeed, 4IR technologies now make a global dictatorship a much more conceivable possibility than it was for the first readers of 1984.

Kalundi Serumaga has illustrated how Africa’s land is “The Final Frontier of Global Capital”. This corroborates Mordecai Ogada’s assertion that “Conservation interests have built a cauldron into which the extremely wealthy are pouring startling amounts of money to subvert systems, grab lands, and plunder resources.” Yet the domination of Africa’s land that global capital seeks to achieve is being greatly aided by 4IR technologies that not only enhance the digitization of land records, but also detailed surveillance and high-tech warfare using 4IR-driven devices such as drones.

Which way forward?

We in Africa ought to urgently clarify our moral values, and based on them, formulate clear guidelines to restrain developers and marketers of 4IR technologies, serving the same old imperialists and some new ones, from dehumanising our people by manipulatively imposing technological innovations on them. Thus we ought to deeply reflect on the social visions of our forerunners such as that of Pixley ka Isaka Seme in his celebrated 1906 Columbia University speech titled “The Regeneration of Africa”. Seme spoke of a regenerated African civilization whose most essential departure “is that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic — indeed a regeneration moral and eternal.” As Lamola explains, for Seme, “the surrender of human agency to machines is … not fathomed. His was a novel conception of the possibility of the symbiosis of scientific progress with human spirituality.” Thus in my recent journal article on “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”, I proposed four normative considerations that, in my view, ought to guide the initiatives of the peoples of Africa in their deployment of 4IR technologies, namely, inclusiveness to meet the needs of all human beings, affordability to bridge the digital divide, respect for the right to cultural identity to guard against cultural imperialism, and ethical orientation as the over-arching guide to building a truly human society.

The domination of Africa’s land that global capital seeks to achieve is being greatly aided by 4IR technologies.

In sum, as we the peoples of Africa enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we ought to do so in a manner that upholds our human dignity, our liberty as communities and individuals, and, as a result, our human agency. This will entail a conscious and consistent repudiation of Eurocentrism in the realm of technology in line with Frantz Fanon’s admonition in the final chapter of his The Wretched of the Earth, A book he diligently worked to complete during the last ten months of his life:

If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe …, then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans. They will know how to do it better than the most gifted among us.

But if we want humanity to advance a step further, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries.

“I am convinced that climate change, and what we do about it, will define us, our era, and ultimately the global legacy we leave for future generations. Today, the time for doubt has passed”.  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 24 September 2007

All earlier geological epochs have resulted from natural processes, but the changes currently being experienced by the planetary ecosystem are anthropogenic—human-induced. Our over-reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable economic practices have led to irreversible climate changes. The two significant causes of climate change are the excessive use of carbon-based energy sources that emit most greenhouse gases and a consumption model that outstrips the available resources.

While wealthy nations are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, poor developing countries that cause the least emissions are the most affected by climate change. For instance, the African continent contributes the least to greenhouse gas emissions but is disproportionately affected by climatic changes. With 17 per cent of the global population, Africa contributes a paltry 2 to 3 per cent of CO2 while the US, with 4 per cent of the world’s population, generates 14 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

The changes in climate mainly manifest in the increase of the global temperature that has been rising since record keeping began in the 1880s, with 2016 and 2020 being the hottest years on record and 2011-2020 being the warmest decade. The change results in extreme events and increased frequency of natural hazards such as droughts, floods, storms, hurricanes and wildfires, often with catastrophic consequences for human life and livelihoods.

These climatic hazards pose existential threats to societies that directly rely on natural capital for their livelihoods. This is particularly the case for Africa, where the vast majority of the population depends for their livelihoods on activities that are primarily rainfall-dependent, such as rain-fed crop production and livestock rearing. These livelihood activities are highly susceptible to climate-related hazards and shocks, rendering rural households vulnerable to shifts and changes in the climate.

Climate change creates favourable conditions for the spread of diseases and the establishment of invasive alien species. For instance, areas previously not mosquito-prone due to low temperatures are now likely to become malaria zones. Since the populations in such areas lack immunity towards the disease, they are likely to be more susceptible than those who inhabit regions prone to malaria. Extreme weather patterns also cause an increase in resource-based conflicts and population displacement—the number of climate refugees is on the rise.

The response by governments—particularly those of rich nations—to address the underlying causes of climate change remain unsatisfactory. Forecasting and early warning systems remain poor in developing countries due to limited meteorological capacities, making it difficult to ascertain the extent and the impact of climate change. On the other hand, local communities rely on their indigenous knowledge and practice to makes forecasts and adapt to the changing climate.

Indigenous knowledge and climate change 

Indigenous communities are not victims of climate change; they are holders of vast intergenerational indigenous knowledge that is critical to climate change mitigation and adaptation. With advances in science, these local knowledge systems have been disregarded as they are perceived as not based on any scientific principles. In recent decades, however, there has been a realization that local communities have developed intricate knowledge systems that are used to forecast climatic events, plan resource use, and adapt to climatic changes. Climate change and resilience experts are calling for the integration of local knowledge systems with scientific know-how to develop sustainable responses to the challenges of climate change.

Indigenous communities are not victims of climate change; they are holders of vast intergenerational indigenous knowledge that is critical to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Pastoralist communities have borne the brunt of climate change. In contrast, pastoralism has evolved to adapt to the changing climate; an increase in hazardous climatic effects often catches pastoralist communities on the back foot. However, their sustained livestock production systems within marginal environments is testimony that their knowledge systems and practices have somehow enabled them to navigate the vagaries of climatic hazards.

While the pastoralist communities of northern Kenya are of different ethnic backgrounds, the basic tenets of their local knowledge systems are similar and interlinked.

The Borana community is a Cushitic community that inhabits the rangelands of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. The Borana have a rich indigenous knowledge system that helps them make decisions within the highly variable environment in which they produce.

Holders of knowledge and its application

Knowledge holders and knowledge types are diverse and are used in a triangulating way to reduce the uncertainty associated with forecasting. The sources of the knowledge are also varied. They include observing the behaviour of livestock and wild animals and the observation of constellations, ultimately co-relating these observations over time and space using rich oral traditions.

Primary to the forecasting knowledge of the Borana is the detailed 12-month calendar that comprises twelve lunar months (Abraasa, Ammaji, Gurandhalaa, Bittateesa, Caamsa, Buufa, Wacabaji, Obora Gudda, Obara Diqqaa, Birraa, Ciqqaaqaa, Sadaasaa) with each month having 27 days (ayyana). The reckoning of the ayyana is based on a lunar cycle similar to that of the Mayan, Hindu and Chinese calendar. The custodians of this knowledge are called ayyaantu. They use a deep understanding of the constellations to keep track of the calendar days. The ayyaantu help with understanding seasonality and foretell the timing and intensity of rainfall occurrences based on the stars. Ayyaantu’s knowledge is hereditary—a father passes it on to a selected son who passes it on in the same fashion. Under certain circumstances, others from a non-ayyaantu family may also be trained by the ayyaantu. This ensures the passing down of knowledge in cases where a direct heir to the knowledge is lacking. For in-depth learning, a son’s only duty is to study during his father’s lifetime; an ayyaantu cannot disseminate the information.

The observations of occurrences in each ayyana  over the years are kept in memory and used to forecast climatic conditions. A significant observation is, for example, the sighting of the new moon, which is used to determine the performance of the upcoming rainy season. Also, at the start of a rainy season, the ayyana on which it begins is an indication of the general performance of the rains. For example, it is believed that if the onset of the rains is on basaa days (basaa durra and basaa balloo), it is expected to be good. It is also on basaa days that sacrifices and prayers for rain—goromti rooba; she-goat sacrifice—are normally conducted.

Usually, the information gathered from the readings of the constellations and its interpretation is disseminated during public gatherings. Based on this system, the Borana ayyaantus have perceived changes in the climate through a decrease in the length of the rainy season since the 1960s.

The observations of occurrences in each ayyana  over the years are kept in memory and used to forecast climatic conditions.

Each ayyana is associated with either good or bad omens and for this reason, beyond forecasting the weather, an important function of the ayyaantu is to determine the dates on which important ceremonies should take place such that they occur during the days associated with good omens. For instance, on the day a child is born, particularly a boy child, the parents immediately consult the ayyaantu to know the omens associated with that day.

The solar systems and climate forecasting

The interpretation of the constellation of stars is a means of counting the calendar days and a major climate forecasting system. The interpretations are made based on the timings of the rising for some of the stars, their colour, and the alignment of the constellations with the moon. The main stars observed include Lamaii (Beta Triangulum), Buusan (Pleiades), Sorsa (Aldebarran), Algajima (Bellatrix), Arba (Central Orion), Walla (Saiph) and Basaa (Sirius).

The interpretation of the stars is done in relation to the traditional months and the respective days of the month, called ayyana. How a specific star aligns with the moon on successive nights is carefully observed and used to forecast rainfall or the severity of the dry season. For instance, if the lamii (Beta Triangulum) stars are aligned with the moon on the 14th of Biraa, the 11th of Ciqaa, the 9th of Sadaasaa, the 7th of Abraasaa, the 5th of Ammaji, and the 3rd of Gurandhala, then it is interpreted that the dry season that follows will be normal with limited negative impacts on people and livestock. This example illustrates the complexity of the knowledge system and intricate observations that can only be memorised by the individuals trained as ayyaantu. This knowledge is a reserve for a few, which gives the holders a revered status in the community.

The sun and moon are also used in weather forecasting. The degree of tilt of the new moon towards the north or south depending on the month provides an indication of how the rainy season will perform. When a ring forms around the moon and the sun, it is associated with the occurrence of heavy rains.

Livestock and wild animals

The Borana observe the behaviour of cattle closely to determine whether the season ahead will be good or bad. For instance, some of the indications of poor conditions ahead include observations such as when the cattle are reluctant to go out to graze or to return to the kraal; lead cattle refusing to take up the role of leading the livestock to graze; cattle sleeping close to each other in the kraal and at times defecating while lying down; cattle licking each other around the throat; and female cows constantly worried and looking out for their calves even after suckling them.

Following slaughter, livestock is also a source of information particularly through the “reading” of the entrails (uusa) by specialists called uuchu. The reading of entrails is also an art that sons learn from their fathers while others learn by following experienced uuchu. The marks in the entrails are observed and used to foretell rainfall. Often, several uuchu observe the same entrails and each provide their observations. The interpretation can differ which leads to interesting arguments that demonstrate the variations in the interpretation.

The Borana observe the behaviour of cattle closely to determine whether the season ahead will be good or bad.

The specific sounds of certain birds, frogs, hyenas, and foxes are also used as rainfall indicators. When the ground squirrel digs out the soil, and the ant constructs its mound during the late afternoon in the dry season instead of doing so at night, this indicates that the rainy season is about to begin.

The information from these various sources is triangulated and further references are made to the knowledge of oral historians (jarsa argaa dhageeti) who have the ability reckon the cyclic occurrences of climatic events.

The foregoing is an attempt to show the various age-old sources of information used by pastoralist communities to enable them to make decisions within the highly variable environment in which they produce. Sustaining livestock production in this environment requires a high degree of livestock mobility, which in turn requires reliable forecasting and good information on the availability of resources. It is a knowledge system that has evolved to fulfil these constant needs for information on which to base decisions.

Opportunities for knowledge integration for informed decisions 

The current climate change situation calls for close collaboration between local actors and global decision-makers. The depth of knowledge that the pastoralist communities possess provides an opportunity for its integration with scientific observations for improved adaptation by these vulnerable communities.

There is currently an increased appreciation of the knowledge held by local indigenous communities within scientific circles. The local knowledge system has been developed over time and passed on across generations, and it has better local applicability and acceptability. Integrating the practical aspects of this local knowledge with scientifically generated knowledge will bridge the divide between knowledge systems and increase the acceptability of climate forecasting information.

Poor investment in equipment and lack of adequate human resources leads to lack of reliable information for planning and decision-making. In Kenya currently, the meteorological department is the primary source of climate information. By bringing the two systems of local and scientific knowledge together, there are areas of complementarity that can improve resilience planning in the country.